Palais des Papes

Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.

Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.

Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.

The Palais des Papes sits on the Rocher des Doms in Avignon, southern France, above the Rhône river in the Vaucluse department of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The TGV from Paris reaches Avignon in about two hours and forty minutes.

Pope Clement V moved the papal court from Rome to Avignon in 1309 to escape factional violence in Italy and to be closer to the French king. Seven popes ruled from Avignon until Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377.

The palace covers roughly 15,000 square metres of floor space, making it the largest Gothic palace in Europe. It was built in two phases: the Palais Vieux begun in 1335 and the Palais Neuf begun in 1342.

Yes. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre of Avignon as a World Heritage Site in 1995. The inscription covers the Palais des Papes, the Episcopal Ensemble, the city ramparts, and the Pont Saint-Bénézet (the bridge of the famous song).

The Festival d'Avignon is an annual theatre festival founded by Jean Vilar in 1947. It runs for about three weeks every July, with its main stage in the palace's Cour d'Honneur. The companion Off festival adds hundreds of independent productions across the city.

Yes. The palace operates as a museum open to the public, with about twenty rooms accessible including the Pope's chamber and the Chambre du Cerf with its fourteenth-century hunting frescoes. A self-guided Histopad tablet reconstructs the rooms in augmented reality.

The Pont Saint-Bénézet, popularly the Pont d'Avignon, is a twelfth-century bridge across the Rhône just outside the palace walls. Four of its original twenty-two arches survive. The medieval French children's song Sur le pont d'Avignon made it famous.

It's a meaningful gift for travellers with ties to Avignon or to the south of France more broadly. The palace is the largest medieval monument in Provence and one of the defining sights of the Rhône valley. A Small or Medium with a handwritten studio note carries well as a wedding or retirement gift.

The honey-gold limestone and deep stained-glass blues sit well with French country, warm Mediterranean, and traditional European interiors. The brushwork also reads at home in jewel-tone maximalist rooms and rooms anchored by dark wood, where the palette has somewhere to land.

Provence and the south of France have been steady in shelter publications for years, and the Avignon papacy story has resurfaced in recent historical fiction and television. The piece suits the current taste for art tied to specific places rather than generic landscapes.

A single Large reads well above a console or a narrow sofa. Over a full-length sofa, a four-tile Mural fills the wall with more presence. For a feature wall above a fireplace or a long banquette, the nine-tile Mural is the architectural choice.

Yes. Order the Dura Satin or Matte finish for any vertical surface that takes moisture or splash: bathroom walls, shower surrounds, kitchen backsplashes. The Glossy finish is reserved for show-pieces and framed wall art away from steam.

A soft microfibre cloth and warm water is all the tile needs. The colour is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, so the surface is not painted-on and will not chip with ordinary cleaning. Avoid abrasive scrub pads on the Glossy finish.

Yes. Every WenderVista piece is original to the studio. The atlas is curated by Reid Wender from a single studio in Knoxville, Tennessee. No licensing, no stock imagery, no syndication. Each place is painted once for this catalog.